PTC tax survey due Monday

Fri, 02/22/2013 - 10:06amJohn Munford

If you were one of the 1,200 lucky households to get an invitation to a survey on Peachtree City services and property taxes, time is running out to respond.

The deadline for responses is Monday, Feb. 25, so those who were invited are strongly encouraged to jump online to have their say as soon as possible. The survey invitation was mailed in an envelope with red lettering on the outside in an attempt to catch the attention of city residents and encourage them to open it.

The survey was authored by a committee of residents who have been studying city spending on various services and the associated impact on property taxes.

The city’s Needs Assessment Committee crafted detail into the survey so residents could have a dollar figure for how much it costs the average home in city taxes for police, fire, recreation and public works services.

The committee is hoping for at least 400 surveys to be filled out to get a statistically valid sampling with an error of plus/minus 5 percent. If even more residents fill out the survey, the results will be even more reliable, committee members have said.

Reliability is crucial for the group as they are hoping to present the survey results to council at a budget workshop in March so the data can be used to help shape the upcoming budget talks for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

Several of the survey questions provide an actual dollar figure of what each department costs in property taxes for the average home, currently valued at $243,000. Armed with that information, it should be easy for residents to determine if they feel the city is spending too much, just enough or not enough for services such as police, fire, recreation and public works.

The survey also asks about whether the city should hire more police officers or firefighters, and also whether it should build any new fire stations. Another question asks if citizens could stomach paying additional property taxes to implement about $10 million in cart path connectivity projects, and how much they might be willing to pay.

Because the survey will be administered online, it will be relatively easy to tabulate the results.

Although Mayor Don Haddix formally created the committee, it has been noted that all of the committee members were volunteers except for one: John Dufresne, who has openly challenged many of Haddix’s ideas and queries. Haddix has let the committee make all its own decisions, occasionally making suggestions along the way but giving the committee full reign to make its own judgment calls on a variety of issues.

Comments

Just realized that our beloved mayor may have pulled a slick one this time. Sending out the survey over mid winter school break could possibly take a large percentage of family's out from responding since many people were vacationing this past week.

Guess no one on the committee has kids in school or thought about this.

The survey in my mind, now is not a typical representation of PTC since those families that went away tend to be families that have kids involved in recreation.

I suspect the committee will wait a little longer for the surveys to come back in.
The members are actually a good group of people, excluding the chair!
They appear to be operating independently with a goal of being fair. It's not about cutting rec, and only rec!

I think the survey is a good thing. I think you doing this without a council majority backing this, is not. Your swiping at fellow council members publicly is one reason no one wants to support any of your initiatives. If you could learn a little about team building than you wouldn't be looked upon like a manchild many think you act like.

You said it a good thing. So that makes Council wrong. It also makes them failed leaders if they vote for any other reason than it is a good and right thing to support or it is not.

I don't need their permission to do what falls totally within the powers of the office of Mayor.

I was elected to represent the citizens and stand by the positions I have held since 2007. I have done that and will keep doing that. Others cannot make that claim for themselves.

When you lapse into the name calling and false claims about how "many" other think, it is time to end the conversation. You have revealed you are pushing an agenda and not interested in real discussion.

which is - having a good idea or being right on an issue does not make one a leader. Taking the idea or issue to the next logical step involves change, consensus, support and sometimes a unanimous vote - although a 4-1 will do. The inability of an elected "leader" to implement a good idea because he has no credibility with those voting is known as SBS - Steve Brown Syndrome. Now if Scott Bradshaw were mayor and he did a survey, he would have the support of council, he would have used some of Nancy Price's bloated budget to market the survey, he would have the Rotary Club filling out surveys at Thursday lunch (there's 100 right there) he would get 50% returns and we would have to rename the SBS syndrome, but I digress.

So, it looks like we are on track to get back about 200 surveys from a skewed demographic and that leads to the question - What are you going to do with it? Present it to council and the public, I'm guessing. Then what? Is there going to be something in the survey results to vote on? Is somebody going to create a budget baed upon the results? Is council going to forget your name calling and posturing and suddenly get behind this survey that they were opposed to last month? You just called them "wrong" and "failed leaders" six hours ago. You also said that you don't need their permission to do anything and that others (presumably the council) have not been consistent in their positions - while you have been. How does that language help with the consenus-building/leadership thing?

Is it not the job of the weak mayor/strong city manager form of government for at least one of them to be some kind of a leader? Or is it the job of the 4 council members to lead?

Not only is Haddix so predictable....it was obvious he was going to respond to the "bait"...He has to claim ownership to anything associated to him. It's like a male cat spraying his territory. Pathetic to say the least. Instead of praising the work of the committee, it's all about him as the chair.

Now in response to H&F on another comment, he has laid out his "un-leadership" style which is "us against them".
All 5 are elected at large with the mayor having a select number of added responsibilities but majority rules. He believes he speaks for all the citizens yet all the citizens elected the others. Somehow this mayor has earned divine provenance over the others. That's why Mike King calls him "King Don".

The mayor's approach is ruining Peachtree City.
You can further confirm that by reading his blog, it's the rants and raves of a mad man!

We need to encourage citizens to run for office this November and make sure that the truth comes out especially since the mayor is prone to fabrication of the facts which is how he won last time. He won based upon the Double Ls
Low voter turn out and Lies.

It was not my intention to "bait" the mayor into anything last night. Guess I snuck a little too much cake after having a few families to the house last night for dinner.

No matter what the mayor or pumpkin believes, nothing is ever accomplished without a consensus. I think a survey of the constituients is a good thing based on the present economic climate. When the mayor originally presented this to council, they did not agree. Instead of charging forward, like he did, a leader would have had second thoughts and reassessed based on the councils concerns since it is very difficult to change 4 people after one disregards their positions just because one has a title of mayor.

The committee he put together worked hard. However, the timing of this may have prevented (my estimation of 1/2) families with school aged child from taking part in the survey. Many of these families, take part in recreation, pay taxes, ect...

The mayors re-election website is a disaster. Instead of highlighting his accomplishments, it places every failure on others. The mayors house must not have any mirrors because he cannot reflect on his own faults. A leader can identify his shortcomings and can actually develop these into strengths with support of his management team. But, we have not seen any team approach since the mayor prefers to call out others in public rather than private conversation.

Larry, don't fret. Unless he changes his ways dramatically, he will be a non factor after the Nov elections.

The committee is remaining independent because there are a number of smart people on it.
They actually dislike the chair who has on more than one occasion tried to bias it against recreation.
It's sort of funny when we talk about it! You are lucky you have good committee members but that's about it.
Lol

I coach both boys and girls sports teams. (Different sports) While my family was away this week on vacation, I had an obligation to coach this week. Both teams had less than half of the players show up for practice this week due to vacations. That indicates to me that the recreation and young family population was down significantly.

Now, if you can think back a few years Mr. Mayor to when you had young kids. Getting prepared to travel takes time beforehand. Washing clothes to take, running to get snacks for the car trip, all take time away from filling out a survey that arrived unexpected in the mail. That's the last thing some parents have time to do before they leave town. It's not like it was a summons to appear in court.

Mr. Mayor, was attendance at this weeks council meeting normal or were there fewer people who showed up? My guess is that it was lacking.

Seems to me that the timing of the survey over a school break may not have been fair to those with school age children.